Under the cover of what seems like a charmingly slapdash style, the Duplass brothers have created a disarmingly shrewd movie.

Kwak is indeed a highly original voice, but you wouldn't know it from Typhoon. It seems as if he's constrained by the conventional material.

For all its drive and passion, Favela Rising is an uneven, spasmodic film.

The film is better than it has any right to be, considering the prosaic source.

Almost as mindless as "Fantastic Four," but more annoying in that this one has philosophical pretensions.

This is by no means a polished film. But it has an energy lacking in thrillers that cost hundreds times more to make. It should be viewed as a calling card from gifted and resourceful filmmakers whom I hope some Hollywood producer will have the sense to sign up immediately.

Virtually everyone who sees this movie will be galvanized to do something about global warming -- and everyone should see this movie.

It's a broad generality to say that French filmmakers have a particularly perverse sensibility, but it can be backed up by one import after another. The latest, La Moustache, is wonderfully odd in a minimalist kind of way.

There are reversals of expectation, miraculous escapes from certain doom -- all the things that make thrillers thrilling. But The Da Vinci Code isn't thrilling.

This has to be the first children's film to weave a Grand Theft Auto joke into the script -- and like most things in the movie, it's pretty amusing.

If you like gore, this is the movie for you.

Dark, disturbing and audaciously original in a way only indies are given license to be anymore, the film never telegraphs where it's heading. But you don't need a pathfinder to sense the general direction is toward hell.

Except for an ending that's so implausible it might have derailed a less solid work, Twelve and Holding is a realistic and sympathetic portrayal of what it's like to be young and confused

Exciting and nerve-racking in the moment, but empty.

The picture gives us two protagonists and sets up a situation in which only one of them can have a decent life. Then, having devised this sour souffle, the screenwriters find no adjustment to make it palatable. The resolution is flip, at best.

Goal! hits the back of the net and is an early candidate for the funnest movie of the summer.

The tribute to an aging parent is moving and gives this routine comedy an extra something.

To label the parents in Wah-Wah dysfunctional doesn't adequately describe their wildly inappropriate behavior.

When Pollack admits that he is not a documentary filmmaker and that he knows nothing about architecture, Gehry says that makes him perfect for this project. But the joke does not redeem the frustration Pollack creates by the choppy, restless views he gives us of Gehry's buildings.

The smarter way to make this movie would have been to edit out everything extraneous to the story of Xavier and Wendy. They're the soul and heart of the movie, while everything else is pretty much dead weight.

In Mission: Impossible III, we find out whether it's still possible to look at Tom Cruise and not see a weirdo. The answer is yes, but a complicated yes, because it takes time.

Art School Confidential exudes confidence as long as it is satirizing a questionable, at least according to Clowes, institution of higher learning. But the film loses its way with multiple subplots, becoming a hodgepodge that isn't particularly hard to follow, but, far worse, provides no compelling reason to bother.

This is the type of movie that you should be getting for free on television.

Fun to watch although falling short of a real hoot, this latest in a barrage of family movies largely succeeds at keeping the kiddies entertained and their parents from nodding off.

In the end, it's really just a thriller, slower than most, with pockets of dead time but with a few extra flourishes, too, thanks to Norton.

A spellbinding Australian Western.

The across-the-board strong performances indicate a sure directorial hand. Everyone is made vivid, down to the smallest roles.

There's just nothing artful about it, and it's Greengrass who deserves the credit. These nonactors don't act the way most people do when playing themselves. They act the way people do when they're being themselves.